Grace Potter reigns in New Brunswick

The view from the crowd: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals on stage at the State Theatre. (Alex Biese)

The past and present danced around each other all night until they collided during Grace Potter and the Notcurnals’ Sept. 8 show at the State Theatre in New Brunswick.

Potter, the Vermont native pop rock songstress, touched on every corner of her decade-long repertoire, but was happy to reach beyond that into the very marrow of rock ‘n’ roll itself: the high point of the show came when she and her band had an old time acoustic throw down on Junior Parker’s 1955 classic, “Mystery Train,” that featured Potter on the drums.

Over the decades, “Mystery Train” has been recorded by everyone from Elvis Presley to Jerry Garcia, and Potter and company left their own rowdy-but-polished stamp on the tune.

“Mystery Train” came at the heart of a set that seemed designed to sum up what Potter and her band have been working towards for years. Over the 20-song set, each of the band’s four studio LPs received plenty of love.

The night hit its crescendo at the end of the main set: as time seemed to collapse in on itself, the band rocking out on the titular two-part opus that closed their 2005 debut LP “Nothing But the Water” before transitioning into the album-opening title track from their 2012 commercial breakthrough, “The Lion the Beast The Beat.”

It could be that Potter is in a reflective mood. After all, the State Theatre show was part of the final run of dates of the Roar tour, and the future for the band is uncertain after that.

“After this tour we are closing down the tour machine for a good chunk of time, let’s put it that way,” Potter told me a few weeks back. “Probably not a whole year, but somewhere in there I need to get a rest, I need to sleep.”

If you still need your GPN fix, allow me to recommend a trip up to Vermont for the band’s annual Grand Point North festival at Waterfront Park in Burlington, Vt. on Saturday, Sept. 14 and Sunday, Sept. 15. Tickets are still available for the weekend, which includes performances by Potter and the Nocturnals on both nights, as well as Gov’t Mule, the Felice Brothers, Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires and more.

“I wanted that to be our last show, actually, but of course we couldn’t stop there,” Potter said of the band’s third annual festival. “We’re going to continue touring into early October, we’re actually going down to Brazil to play a show in Rio after Grand Point North but Grand Point North, for me, is the cherry on top and if there was a beautiful way to have that curtain call, I would think Grand Point North is essentially, by definition, that, because it is us coming home to the place that we grew from and the place that we love the most.

“So yeah, three years in we’re learning things, we’re growing, the festival is taking all kinds of different characteristics on from year to year and it’s been exciting to watch that transition and to have friends hearing about it. Warren (Haynes) from Gov’t Mule and the Allman Brothers reached out because he had heard such good things about it. Every year that we do it it just digs our heels in a little deeper and shows people just how much we care about bringing it back home and sharing that local love.”

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals’ Sept. 8 set list. (twitter.com/gracepotter)

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About Alex Biese

An Asbury Park Press staff writer since 2005, Alex Biese is a proud member of the local music community, both as a journalist and a musician. Along with his work for the Press, he has written for outlets including MTV.com and Film Festival today magazine.

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About the Author

Alex BieseAn Asbury Park Press staff writer since 2005, Alex Biese is a proud member of the local music community, both as a journalist and a musician. Along with his work for the Press, he has written for outlets including MTV.com and Film Festival today magazine.E-mail Alex

Jean MikleJean Mikle has worked at the Asbury Park Press for more than 20 years, most recently as an investigative reporter on the Projects Team. In her "other life," she’s a fan and proponent of the Asbury Park music scene, both then (Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Southside Johnny Lyon) and now (Wave Gathering, The Stone Pony, The Saint) and all sorts of new music.E-mail Jean